Narratives of the week : December 14
First $BTC dip, $JTO airdrop, $BONK, and strong coins ($INJ, $TIA, $AVAX)
Welcome to this weekly recap, I am Viktor and you can find me here on Twitter and here on Telegram. Enjoy your reading !
$BTC and the market overall
$BTC reached a new yearly high at $44700 on December 9, but then had its first significant dip since the start of the uptrend in October : it wicked to $40600, then bounced to $42.3k, and then dumped again to $40.7k. At this moment, there was fear again in the market, as people were wondering if they were going to give back their recent gains.
But yesterday it pumped again, and we are now around $43k. I have no idea where the market is going from here, but taking some profit on perps on $44k made a lot of sense, and at the current prices too. Most of the recent moves comes from the ETF narrative, and we’ve gone from $27k to $44k on the back of this narrative. Maybe we have just entered in up only season for a few months, but we could also have a meaningful correction, without invalidating the fact that we started a bull market.
BTC dominance is currently right above 53%, down from 55% on December 5. $ETH is at $2280 now, it slightly underperformed $BTC this week.
If you want to better understand the $BTC price action post-dip, there are two resources you can go to. The first one is this thread by cyborg, good CT account to follow :
The second one is this video by TraderMayne : click here.
By the way, while I was writing this, I have just seen that there was some sort of exploit related to a “Ledger library”, and that should wait before interacting with dapps. Follow banteg’s account to have more information about it for example. This just caused a flush down to $41.5k and now we are at $42.5k.
Strong selected coins : $TIA, $INJ, $AVX
When a dip happens in an uptrend, look for the coins that have the fastest recovery, because these are likely to remain hot afterwards, unless the market nukes completely. After the correction we had this week, three coins in the top 50 have very clearly been the strongest : $INJ, $TIA, and $AVAX.
Injective $INJ :
I have stated several times that $INJ was simply too strong to be faded in 2023, and here we are : $INJ is up +80% this week, and is the first major coin in price discovery despite being in its second cycle. Honestly, I don’t really think the fundamentals of $INJ justify such a valuation, but crypto is a reflexive market where people buy strong coins, which makes them even stronger, etc. Now that $INJ is a top 30 coin, I am seeing people getting interested in the Injective ecosystem. The TVL is still ridiculous on the chain ($12M according to DeFillama), and I don’t know of any direct “beta coin to $INJ”. This might be the time to look for them. I have also seen that people have been buying “NFTs on Injective” in the last few days, so this could be another opportunity. Don’t forget that you can take profit too, if you are up big.
Celestia $TIA :
The second strong coin of the week is $TIA (+35%). Another example of coin that does not offer significant drawdowns, and that has been a consistent winner for 6 weeks straight, since its launch. $TIA is now up 6x from its “bottom” price, which is also its average price during the first week. $TIA is the leader of the “modularity” narrative, which sounds pseudo-intellectual and most people don’t even understand what Celestia can do, but it already has a lot of mindshare. Given this initial run, I expect $TIA to remain a good performer during the whole cycle, but you have to know that its current FDV is $13bn, and that is already huge. TIA is almost a top 10 coin in FDV terms, so you could still get another 10X, but certainly not a 100X.
Avalanche $AVAX :
The third major strong coin is $AVAX (+45%). $AVAX went as high as $43, which is very impressive for a coin that made new lows in 2023 after the echo bubble. $AVAX is now up more than 4x from its October bottom. Part of this is just a laggard reaction to $SOL, because everyone remembers that $AVAX was very similar to $SOL in terms of price action in 2021, and part of this is the positioning as a gaming coin, because a few Avalanche subnets will be used for gaming, and this is a great edge in terms of narrative. (Before that, Avalanche was just another EVM L1, but behind SOL, now a potential gaming narrative gives a better reason to buy it in my opinion…)
2021 alt L1s
A leading sector this week has been “old” / 2021 alt L1s. I just mentioned $AVAX in this category, $SOL is in it too, but it did not pump so much this week (+15%). But a massive performer of the week in this category is $ADA, up +45%. $ADA is an alt L1 that is pure retail coin, which is probably the explanation for its incredible run during last cycle.
Its performance of the week might be a sign that retail has started opening the Coinbase app again ? Anyway, I expect $ADA to be the new $XRP, in the sense that it is a coin that retail loves, but it already had one massive run, and it is now a top 10 coin that will have a hard time outperforming BTC/ETH. I can be completely wrong on this, but I include $ADA in my bucket of hedge shorts (read more about the way I open shorts in this market, here).
A few other “old alt L1” coins had a strong week : $ICP (+32%), $DOT (+22%), $ALGO (+31%), $ATOM (+17%), $FTM (+20%), $EGLD (+25%). The alt L1 trade is a trade that never dies.
Solana ecosystem and the $JTO airdrop :
$SOL reached a new yearly high this week, right below $78. This is close to 4X from the October prices, and its a price many people would never have expected to see this year. If you are in massive profits on $SOL, don’t forget to take some profits. The r/r for $SOL at these prices is way less interesting than a few weeks before, but on the other hand if you consider that it is the next top 3 coin, it can be a comfy hold.
$JTO launched this week and was airdropped to $jitoSOL holders. I was thinking that $1 would be a good price to sell $JTO, because $1 means $1bn FDV. I have been very surprised to see that it reached $2 very quickly after launch… and then even pumped during the days after, until its $4.4 top. I opened a short around $4, and documented it on Twitter :
The $JTO airdrop ended up being absolutely massive for the people that got it, at least 5 figures for most people and sometimes even 6 figures. Once people realized that, they started to rush to Solana airdrop farming. Airdrop farming is definitely a great idea for anyone below 6-figure-portfolio, because a good airdrop might be very substantial compared to the net worth. Here are a few interesting tweets I bookmarked, with regards to Solana airdrops :
The $JTO airdrop has created a wealth effect on Solana, and it benefitted a lot to all the Solana ecosystem, with beta coins flying : $BONK (+65%), $RAY (+75%), $FIDA (+38%), $NEON , $HNT (+32%), $SRM (+27%), $HONEY (+90%), $MOBILE (+500%), $NEON (+100%), $SHDW (+80%). $BLZE and $MNDE, two Solana liquid staking tokens, also profited massively from $JTO airdrop.
$BONK and dog coins on X chain
As I just wrote, $BONK had a very good week, but it was eventful. It topped on December 9 around .147 (adjust the 0s…) but then very quickly dumped -33%, and then bounced but printed a lower high (which is bearish), and then a lower low. But yesterday Coinbase announced its listing, and this was in the same time as the $BTC “bounce”, which pumped $BONK massively again, it is currently in price discovery around .153, with a $1.5bn FDV. $BONK could definitely be the next $SHIB, and I own a bag, but be careful at these prices, after almost 100x in two months… don’t FOMO into these prices.
The BONK run (no pun intended) ignited a “dog coin / memecoin on X chain” narrative, which is why some other dog coins have been flying such as $TOSHI (+175% this week, this is actually a cat coin, but it is the leading memecoin on Base, and it has a great potential in my opinion, the current MC is $60M), $HUAHUA on Cosmos (only $35M market cap and Cosmos does not have many memecoins), $AIDOGE on Arbitrum (this one is meh, maybe there will be another leading memecoin on Arbitrum later), $HUSKY on Avax, $COQ on Avax too (not a dog coin), etc.
Another “dog coin” that performed very well is $DOG, which is a liquid-tokenized version of “The Doge NFT”, which was purchased for close to $5M : read the story here. $NFD is a very similar token too.
ETH beta coins
As $ETH has been flat, most of the ETH-related coins have been slow too, except $OP, which was among the strongest coins of the week and is up +30%. It is particularly noticeable that $OP massively outperformed $ARB, and now the FDV of $OP is almost on par with FDV 0.00%↑ , while a few months ago, there was a 2x multiple discrepancy between the two. I honestly don’t have a clear explanation for $OP outperformance, besides closing the FDV gap between two similar L2s…
AI coins
The AI narrative simply won’t disappear, and it is providing the market with great returns. If you have zero exposure to AI coins, I suggest you chose at least one or two projects that could benefit from it. My favorite AI coin is $RNDR (+30% this week), it is available on CEX, and its chart has been making me think about $INJ chart during this whole year. Both RNDR and INJ have strong charts against BTC, and this is why I expect $RNDR to remain a top-performer during all of the cycle.
In the “CEX-available AI coin” category, $FET is another leader this week, with +35% gains. $AGIX was the AI best-performer during the January-March echo bubble, but now it looks like $FET is a better choice than $AGIX. Other strong AI coins this week include : $CTXC (+50%), $ORAI (+40%), $AKT (+37%).
Gaming and launchpads
Just like AI, gaming is a narrative that won’t go away, and that will probably give some huge return opportunity. The largest gaming coin, $IMX, is up +50% this week. $BEAM (which was previously $MC), is up +50% too. These two will probably remain strong over the cycle.
$GOG is also up +130%, $MYRIA is up +66%, and $UOS is up +50%, after a few months of very poor performance (it peaked in April 2023).
We can also see that launchpad coins have been very hot, especially gaming launchpads : $SFUND (+35%), $GAFI (+50%), $PAID (+35%), $SNFTS (+68%), $CGG (+47%).
Cosmos ecosystem
$TIA and $INJ were two of the leaders this week, and both of them come from the Cosmos ecosystem. Same thing with $KUJI which is in price discovery again, and is up +80% this week.
$ATOM is up +17% this week, and its most direct beta, $OSMO, is up +55%. By the way, Osmosis and Umee (UX Chain) might have a merger. $UX is up +30% this week.
Other strong pure Cosmos coins this week : $EVMOS (+26%), $JUNO (+40%), $NTRN (+42%).
BTC beta coins and ordinals / BRC-20
BTC beta coins have been mostly flat until yesterday, when $BTC started moving up again. $STX, the main Bitcoin L2, is up +25% today, while its ow beta coin $ALEX did a 2x this week.
As for BRC-20, Binance announced this week the listing of $SATS, which pumped its price 2x, and $ORDI is now moving up again, because it is up +25% in a day. Other BRC-20 coins are flying too, such as $MUBI (+60% this week), $RATS (+300%), $TRAC, PIZA. There is also $BSSB which is a kind of stablecoin protocol backed by Bitcoin ecosystem assets ?
My main bet in this category is $ORDI, because it is the leader, and I expect it to go to $100 at least.
What else happened in the altcoin market ?
$BTT is one of the best performers of the week in the top 100 (+72%), but surprisingly, ver few people are mentioning it in my Twitter timeline.
The $TREE coin has been launched this week. It is a utility token to get access to Tree News, the news service created by the Twitter account “Tree of Alpha”. The market cap is ranging between $8M and $15M, this looks quite cheap with regards to ToA reputation on CT.
$DESO has been pumping this week too (+85%), it is the “OG” SocialFi protocol which was initially called BitClout.
$RLB price has been close to flat during the last 2 months of up-only market in crypto, mainly because a few large holders sold a lot of tokens, but it is now again at $0.20, so it is a good one to have on your watchlist.
Thank you for reading this article,
Cheers,
Viktor.
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